


Dispatches

by thedevilchicken



Series: Epistolic [3]
Category: The Following
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:03:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2464274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Third in the <i>Epistolic</i> series. </p>
<p>Joe's out, but he's not the only serial killer in the story. Things get messy for Ryan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dispatches

It was always going to end this way, Ryan thinks. It's tough to see how it could have ended any other way. 

***

The news came via his 10am class, a small group seminar he taught in his office though it wasn't really big enough for that. The jarringly cheerful girl called Tammy with the dreadlocks and three noserings always wound up sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner, not that she ever seemed to mind. She didn't seem to mind much of anything at all. Ryan had never really understood people like that, though he was kind of jealous of them; it must've been a great life being so blissfully unaware, trading on her parents' money.

It was Tammy who started it, already sitting there on a cushion on the floor by the bookcase when he walked into the room. The others occupied all three seats on the couch as well as the rickety pine side table that pulled double duty as a stool. They were all usually early to fight for a spot on the sofa, except for Tammy who turned up dead on time and took the floor. The fact that she was there meant he was late, but maybe just a couple of minutes. At least they could see he'd made an effort; he'd jogged up the stairs from the parking lot and looked suitably dishevelled for it.

"We thought you weren't going to show!" Tammy said, just as cheerful as she'd ever been, except with a weird edge to it that he couldn't place. But they were all looking at him like he'd grown a second head or announced his emigration to Afghanistan and so something was obviously wrong here. "Gosh, you're not hiding him, are you? Is that why you're late?"

"I got stuck in traffic," he said. He must have looked as totally bemused as he felt because his class all turned to look at each other all at once, so well timed it was almost comical. "Is someone gonna let me in on the secret here?"

Tammy chewed on her lip. "Well..." she started, with an expansive shrug that shifted the dreadlocks from her shoulders and almost knocked a cold cup of coffee off the bookcase behind her. He really needed to stop leaving cups everywhere, or learn to actually drink his damn coffee. "It's just, Joe Carroll escaped again. We all thought you knew! You know, because of, um. That thing you said we're not allowed to talk about."

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and groaned as he dropped down into his desk chair. "Look, go home," he said, shoving his hands down into the pockets of his jeans as he slouched in the chair. Not one of the five of them made a move, or looked like they were planning to. "Really, guys. I'm serious." They all looked at him blankly. "Get out of state if you can. Get as far away from me and the state of New York as you can. I'm doing you a favour here." He gestured at the open door, exasperated. "Go!" And finally, they went, looking nonplussed about the whole thing, even cheerful Tammy. They'd probably been looking for gossip and he was happy to deny them - hell, he had none to give.

He spun the chair round to face his desk and pulled out his cell. It had been turned off since 7.28pm the night before, when he'd last got off the phone with Max, ‘cause if there was one thing in life that he flat out refused to do, it was getting between her and Mike when they argued. They'd been doing that a lot lately, though he tried not to notice. He had twelve messages when he turned the phone back on and only two of them were chapters of Max and Mike's odyssey of arguments, the second cut short by the news of Joe's most recent escape and a demand that he call her back ASAP.

Three were from Carrie, still chasing that next exclusive, trading on their pseudo-friendship that had started to wane despite their occasional dinner. Her Korban book had been a huge hit, since she'd seen a chunk of it first hand, and somehow all Carroll cult news was good news where Carrie's career was concerned. Five were other news networks chasing quotes, though how they got hold of his number was kinda sketchy. Two were from the Assistant Director of the FBI and he was damn sure those weren't calls he wanted to return. The whole thing with the wedding had left him way outside the Bureau's list of go-to guys and any other reason they'd get in touch couldn't mean anything good for him. 

So, it was true: Joe had performed yet another great goddamn escape. Ryan had to wonder if Joe hadn't told him because he'd known he'd disapprove, and probably turn him right in, or if something altogether weirder were at play here. Awkwardly, all things considered, he hoped Joe had just been Joe and told him lies, but the sick feeling in his gut told him they were none of them so lucky. 

"I don't think this was him," he told Max. Hers was the first and only call that he returned that morning, though he regretted it pretty much instantly.

"I'm sorry, Ryan. I just don't think you're the best judge of that right now."

Ryan sighed. "Don't do that, Max."

"Don't do _what_?"

"We're not gonna have this conversation again, okay?"

"I'm coming over." Max paused a beat and he heard Mike's voice in the background. "Okay, _we're_ coming over. You're home, right?"

"I'm at the office. I'll be there in fifteen." Sure, they could argue with the best and Max knew how to hold a grudge, but if there was one thing he knew about her it was that she always had his back. Even when she thought he was being a dismissive, idiotic prick. 

They rang off and Ryan squeezed his eyes shut. The clock on his office wall said 10.07am and it was shaping up to be a hell of a day.

***

He'd told Max on a Tuesday, four days after he'd last seen Joe, on his way back from a check-up at the hospital. 

He'd been stuck in there for six weeks and three surgeries, through two technical deaths and a whole lot of sepsis. He'd been force-fed so much medication that he could barely get up out of bed for the first month and his memories of the first days off of full sedation were hazy at best. No one was sure if he'd make it or if he'd just give out in the ICU - after all, his heart was still for shit and no one would've been surprised. Then he turned a sudden, unexpected corner and in a flash he was up and alert, running his mouth and going stir-crazy waiting to get out. 

The next couple of weeks he'd spent mostly in bed in his apartment watching reruns of _Columbo_ , his days punctuated by visits to the outpatient clinic at the hospital and check-up phone calls from Max. He felt physically sick every time stood up for the first few days, was actually sick a couple of times from the double-team of abdominal pain and his over-strong meds, and he could barely stay awake for thirty minutes together, but pretty soon he could walk upright without something burning like a son of a bitch in his side. He'd gotten himself _really_ fucked up. He guessed he deserved it, given what he'd had to do to put an end to Joe's cult's most recent activities. As much as he knew it'd needed to be done, it needed to weigh on him somehow. In the end it almost felt like he'd done his penance for it by the time he could actually leave the apartment without a chaperone. He felt freer somehow. That should've worried him more.

The first place he'd gone to alone was the prison. He'd been reading Joe's letters. He couldn't not go. He'd really only been able to jerk off in the shower so many times before he'd had to cave and admit that Joe was more than just another killer he'd caught, not just because he wrote him a torrent of twisted fucking _love letters_ where they fucked each other and killed each other with roughly equal urgency and somehow that all made sense to him. For better or worse, Joe was a part of his life; it made him sick and made him hard and made him question if he'd ever really known himself at all, but he was in his life. And, since the Bureau had pulled strings to get Joe's sentence commuted, he'd be sticking around in that life a while longer. 

Max hadn't wanted to hear it, but he'd known that'd be her reaction going in. She'd been caught up in Joe's random web of cultist crap almost to the same degree as he and Mike had and so sitting down across from her at her kitchen table and giving her the fucking lunatic news that he'd been legally married to Joe freaking Carroll for the past few months, that was always going to be a hard sell. He'd had to push the marriage licence to her over the tabletop to get her to stop laughing at him like he'd taken up stand-up and turned out to be pretty goddamn good at it. It was all so insane that it almost seemed like he had.

"So, you made a deal," she'd said, once she'd found her words again, gripping the edge of the table so hard her knuckles were white. "For information."

"He told me everything."

"And you're sure about that?"

"Pretty damn sure, yeah." And he _was_ sure. He wasn't sure he could explain to her just how sure he was, or just how he was sure, but there was little else he knew to be truer. He remembered how Joe had looked, like he'd conceded a point or like he'd surrendered or maybe not even that, maybe just that he'd stopped pretending for the time it took to tell his story. He'd told the truth. He'd let Ryan really see him in the process.

Max shrugged, sitting back and shoving her hands into her pockets. "So much for moving on," she said. "Just get ready for the shitstorm that's gonna come down when the press gets a hold of this." She reached out to pick up her coffee, sipped then scowled at it; they'd been talking, and not talking, for so long that she'd taken a sip of room-temp decaf. Apparently leaving coffee to the point of unpalatability was a Hardy family trait. "I just can't believe you're trusting him."

He couldn't make her see that it had nothing to do with trust and everything to do with understanding Joe in a way that no one else did, and disturbingly vice versa though that wasn't something he was in a rush to explore. But then she asked him to tell her what Joe had told him and then, worse than the trust issue, there was the fact that he couldn't tell her anything Joe had said that she didn't already know. There was an investigation already underway and the last thing he needed was Max knowing the details of what he'd done. She'd wind up needing to cover them up and besides, some of it he didn't even _want_ to share. Parts of Joe's story needed to stay out of the public domain, even aside from the fact that getting into what he'd said could wind up getting into what he'd said _in his letters_ , and damn if those letters didn't need to stay private. 

He dug his heels in. He'd meant what he'd told Joe; he was going to tell her the bare minimum and nothing more, even if that was as much for his own sake as it was for hers. 

And then, naturally, Mike had walked in.

"Hey, Ryan," he said, setting a couple of bags of groceries on the counter. He looked at the two of them and frowned. "Okay, what did I just walk into?"

"My mad uncle married Joe Carroll." Mike raised his brows. Max practically waved her arms in the air, gesturing at the marriage licence sitting there in front of her on the table. "He _married_ Joe Carroll!" Mike came over, looked over the licence, and somehow his brows crawled up even higher. 

"You married Joe Carroll? _Joe_ Carroll? Bane of our lives, Joe Carroll?"

"Yeah. For information," Ryan said, by way of explanation. "I made the deal the Bureau wouldn't make. He told me everything." 

He could see the gears turning in Mike's head as he worked that through, given his knowledge of events recent and past. Sometimes it was just like watching himself.

"Oh." He gave a brief, near-incredulous shake of his head. Apparently, like Ryan had almost hoped it would, and almost hoped it wouldn't, it had all fallen into place for Mike. "So _that's_ what happened." 

At least one of them got it, he thought. He guessed Max probably did too, but was sticking with outraged denial for the time being. Hell, he couldn't blame her; the situation was off-the-wall insane, even without considering the fact that he'd shot dead eight people. He'd bludgeoned another, stabbed three more and almost died in the process. Twice. He was racking up quite the body count and his medical records looked like a modern day Wound Man.

Joe didn't make the situation any easier on him either, not that he'd ever expected him to. It was maybe a month later that Carrie came calling ‘cause some prison source or courthouse leak or something in that line had tipped her off; that was another really awkward conversation. She reliably informed him that Joe had legally changed his name and Ryan couldn't help but laugh at that. There was something completely fucking hilarious about the idea of ‘Joe Carroll-Hardy' and Joe had totally failed to mention that little fact in his letters, probably ‘cause it'd ruin the comic effect when he eventually found out. Ryan cracked the hell up completely when she asked in all seriousness if he had any plans to change his own name because, well, damn if ‘Ryan Carroll-Hardy' didn't sound completely surreal. He just snorted when she asked if they'd consummated the marriage, though he guessed technically that one was at least accurate. Claire ought to get a big kick out of this whole thing when she heard, he'd thought. It was weird that he'd barely even thought of her in months.

He'd confirmed the marriage to Carrie when he'd calmed him back down, and he'd refused point-blank to tell her more while on the record. Off of it, he told her it'd been the only way to get the information they'd all needed to stop the last batch of Carroll cultists. It even sounded pretty plausible, he thought; maybe she wouldn't dig any deeper and no one higher up would need to take a look at him and Joe together, maybe she'd just go for the gossip rag cover story instead. Knowing her like he did, though, there'd be questions coming further down the line. She was probably planning another book by then. 

When the news broke about the marriage, he'd known his classes were going to be tough. They all knew the Joe Carroll story, they'd studied it in another class and all believed they were experts as a consequence, the way undergrad students always did. It was a class that his boss had actually tried to get him to teach, looking nervous throughout the conversation like Ryan was going to flip out and quit on the spot or maybe something worse, but he'd just shrugged and declined the offer, pretty politely he thought. He'd actually slipped into the back of the hall when they'd taught the four-lecture series and though he'd had to resist the urge to cry bullshit more than a couple of times, it was a pretty accurate representation on the whole. They even used the good photo of him when his name came up, not the one Carrie used in her book where he was drunk off his ass.

He'd agreed to mark a batch of twenty or so papers for that class. The one that strongly suggested he and Joe had conducted a sexual relationship during the first investigation at Winslow got a B+ and a note: _Good use of sources overall but always base your theories on the evidence. I wasn't screwing Joe Carroll. -RH_

A couple of the students had refused to take his classes when they heard the news, but mostly numbers rose pretty steeply because of it. His boss was understandably concerned but also a decent guy who understood he'd still got the best guy for the job there in Ryan - the kids liked him, he was a pretty great teacher with great feedback scores and he still had that twinkle of celebrity that brought in new applications. But the questions were inevitable. In the end, he resorted to posting notices and making regular announcements. _You've reached the voicemail of Ryan Hardy. If you're calling about my marriage, hang up now_. An FAQ taped to his office door. A slide at the start of all his classes' PowerPoints expressly outlawed questions about it, which was already a standing rule where Joe and Havenport were concerned. It became routine. He battled through.

Eventually, it had all died down into the background. Nine months had passed, twelve since the wedding. And now it would start up all over again.

Ryan left the building, zipping his jacket up under his chin and pulling on his gloves as he went. He had assigned parking in the faculty lot and set off at a jog for his space, dodging a couple of stray reporters, his phone in one hand and his laptop bag in the other. At this point it was almost a cliché when he caught sight of the masked reflection in the car window; it was too late for him to avoid the blow to the back of his head, and he was knocked unconscious before he had time to react.

***

Joe was duct taped hand and foot to an office chair with the castors broken off of it. That was the first thing Ryan saw when he came to. He guessed he'd seen weirder. 

"Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty," Joe said. Apparently whoever it was that had taken the two of them had neglected to duct tape Joe's mouth, which likely meant they didn't care how much noise he made. They'd have to be some way away from civilisation at large if they'd not been found pretty much immediately, ‘cause Joe was something of an expert in raising holy hell when he felt so inclined. "I was starting to think you'd never wake up. I was starting to sound a bit crazy, talking to myself."

Ryan looked around blearily. He was hanging by the wrists from a pair of handcuffs, the chain looped over a hook that was suspended from a rafter high above. The toes of his boots barely scraped the wooden floor and his hands were numb but his shoulders were screaming. He guessed he'd been hanging there for a while. The room looked familiar to him but his vision was still too blurred to be sure about it.

"You wondered if I'd been scheming behind your back, didn't you." Joe tutted melodramatically. "I thought you'd have known me better than that by now."

"I did." He deliberately left his meaning ambiguous and Joe took it just the way he wanted to, with a self-satisfied smile. He had a real talent for making words fit his viewpoint and Ryan had to admit he didn't do much to discourage him. 

Ryan's voice was hoarse and his throat felt dry. He pulled on the cuffs that he was hanging from, feeling them dig in and make his numb hands actually feel something - sadly, what they felt was a whole damn spectrum of pain. He groaned and pulled himself up more, higher, grabbing for the rope; he couldn't quite get it ‘cause the cuffs were in the way, cursed and let himself hang back down. 

"You were unconscious for about three hours," Joe said, apparently not planning to shut his mouth anytime soon, probably because that was just about the only part of him that wasn't currently incapacitated. Besides, he did so love the sound of his own voice. "Our host rudely neglected to leave me a timepiece, however, so I can only give you my best guess." 

Ryan ignored him, pulling himself up again. He lifted his knees, swung a little though the metal cuffs bit into his wrist and a wet trickle of blood ran up his sleeve; he kicked up one leg and snaked his knee and foot and ankle around the rope, just enough to get some leverage. 

"Oh, _that's_ going to hurt." Joe was right; Ryan clenched his teeth as he yanked his hands up now that his leg was taking at least some of his weight, pulled the cuffs up and off of the hook, but releasing himself meant he fell down directly, hard on his back. His head hit the floor and he groaned, dizzy, as he picked himself up and dusted himself down. He was pretty sure he had a concussion already from whatever the hell they'd hit him with in the parking lot, so this was going to make pretty much no positive impact on his general well-being. Never mind the fact that his escape had been made _way_ too easy for it not to be expected, maybe all part of the plan. There'd be a plan. Now they just needed to figure out what that plan was.

"You saw who it was?" he asked, considering for a second whether he should get Joe out of the tape and off the chair or just leave him there. Joe gave him a pointed look and Ryan knew they both knew he was going to let him go. He checked his pockets to find the only thing they'd left him with at all was a credit card, for all the use that was, then he dropped down into a crouch and started working on the tape around Joe's ankles.

"I'll give you three guesses," Joe told him.

Ryan shook his head, glancing up at him for a second. He pulled the tape free and tossed it aside, then quickly moved on to Joe's right wrist.

"So you're saying it's Mark Gray."

"None other."

"Well, damn."

Of course, no one had thought that maybe, just _maybe_ , Gray had let himself get caught; they'd just locked him up and debated throwing away the key, but never actually got around to it. None of the messages on his cell had thought to mention to him that there was a second prisoner missing. Sometimes it was like they were all obtuse on purpose.

Ryan freed Joe's wrist and Joe made fairly short work of the tape at the other, though he did curse colourfully under his breath as he basically waxed the hair from his forearm. He was still in his prison-issue clothing, a dull blue colour now he was off death row though with an occasional splash of blood that looked to have come from a mixture of his gashed forehead and other parts unknown. Something told him it wasn't all Joe's blood. Ryan gingerly touched the back of his own head and found dried blood where he'd been hit. This really wasn't their day. It sucked particularly hard because weirdly, they _did_ have good ones.

"Did you-" was all Ryan managed to say next before he was cut off, by Joe's mouth against his, hard and urgent. Joe's hands went to his waist and to the back of his neck, fingers grazing the place Ryan had just found injured; apparently it was sore enough to make Ryan to bite down at Joe's lip, forcing him take a hasty step backwards and almost trip over the chair he'd just left. Ryan held a hand to the back of his own head. 

"Ouch!" Joe actually said the word, so British and his surprise so fucking incongruous given his company and the situation at hand that Ryan could have laughed. Joe touched his fingers to his lip and brought them back bloody, showing them to Ryan with something like a combination of amusement and consternation. "What exactly was _that_ for?"

Ryan rubbed his palm against the back of his head, the movement awkward with the cuffs still fixing his wrists together, and brought it back with blood of his own to show off in reply. He really wished he could've said he couldn't believe they were having this conversation.

"We don't have time for this," he said, rubbing the blood from his hands on the thigh of his jeans, and Joe conceded the point with a shrug. "Did you see where he went?"

"I have no idea." Joe gestured to the dining table and in his concussed haze, Ryan realised they'd been here before. "But he left us those."

It was Lily Gray's house. More like the twins' house, he guessed, the place where Luke had died and he guessed that made a sick sort of sense given Mark was behind this. Most of the stuff that'd been there that day was gone, probably sitting in some FBI lock-up covered in evidence tags, but they'd left the dining table and Mark had left two envelopes sitting on it, Joe's name on one and Ryan's on the other. They picked them up and tore into them; Joe was careful about it, Ryan wasn't, and that didn't surprise him one bit.

It was a brief note, got straight to the point. Mark had left them there to die. Well, no: strictly speaking, he'd left them there to be killed. His mother had had to kiss a pretty huge number of frogs in her demented quest for a prince, and it seemed she had something of a following of her own. There were twelve well-known and well-practiced serial killers on the property with instructions to kill the two of them in any way they saw fit; the one who caught them first got to choose how they did it. The chase would start at 4pm. Ryan's watch was missing and Joe lived in the timeless world of federal prison; they had no idea what time it was between them. 

"We've gotta move," Ryan said. Joe couldn't disagree.

***

It was easy to forget that Joe was quite the efficient killer when you stopped to listen to him talk. 

He could talk for hours, fascinated by the sound of his own voice and rather satisfied with his own intellect. Ryan sometimes let him because it was a perverse kind of fun to listen to him. They spent 15 minutes on the phone each week, 7.15am on Tuesday mornings after Ryan got in from his run and before he went into the office, and Joe did the vast majority of the talking. Ryan visited once a month, Sunday night to Monday morning, and sometimes all he did was listen to Joe talk. He'd talk through anything if he let him, but there was a time and place for it. 

This was not one of those times. There was absolutely no more inappropriate a place. When Ryan told him to shut the fuck up and do something useful, he looked irritated for a second, opened his mouth to reply, then did exactly what Ryan had said instead.

There was nothing useful in the house. They went room to room, sticking together because if Mark was telling the truth then twelve individual, independent killers were somewhere on the property and they had a better chance of getting through this together. Ryan was still handcuffed anyway and there was nothing they could use to get him out of the cuffs. 

They made quick work of the dining room, then the kitchen - completely empty, cupboards bare - and were in and out of the bedrooms and bathrooms within ten minutes. There were a few items of discarded clothing in a dresser drawer and since they'd come up empty in the study and the conservatory, the cellar and the walk-in freezer and the goddamn garage too, like they'd cleared out everything from the entire estate to make this even more difficult than it was already, all Ryan could think of was unscrewing a set of heavy brass doorknobs with the credit card left in his back pocket and dropping each into what he was sure was a crazy-expensive pair of socks. It was something, not much but something, even if it felt a bit Three Stooges.

They took out the first killer with them, though it was hardly a moment of great valour. The guy looked nervous almost to the point of a panic attack and Ryan had to remind himself that not all serial killers were even remotely like Joe was; some of the ones who got away with it the longest were solitary, socially isolated, capable of maintaining most basic human interactions but they were hardly Joe's level of functional psychopath, were instead much more at ease with the dead. Ryan almost felt sorry for the guy when he knocked the gun from his shaking hands and Joe put in a stunning shot with a socked doorknob to the back of the head. The guy went down, sprawled on the floor with a look of utter terror, and Ryan stepped down on his throat before he could make a sound except for crunching. He was dead in under a minute.

Ryan really wished he'd hesitated. Joe had the gall to look proud.

Joe picked up the gun, a little revolver that looked barely even previously owned, let alone previously used, and cocked his head at Ryan with it there in his hand at his side. For a second, Ryan almost believed he was going to shoot, then he held it out to him instead. 

"You're the better shot," he said, though it looked like it pained him to admit it. 

They moved on, out of the house. It was hard to see the best course of action when they didn't know who was coming, and though Ryan didn't like their chances if they had another Huntsman waiting in the hundreds of acres of grounds and woodland that surrounded the house, maybe they'd get lucky and they'd all be nervy, awkward sexual sadists. 

Ryan shot the next one in the head as he turned the corner of the house in front of them, totally unprepared. The guy's green combat pants and hunting vest looked like they'd spent all of an hour outside the camping store; it was pretty ridiculous. 

Since he'd already fired once, he gave the gun to Joe and had him shoot the cuffs point blank against the ground - it took two tries but they separated roughly central and gave him back full use of his hands. Joe reloaded the revolver with bullets he'd taken from the first guy's neatly ironed jeans, Ryan took the rifle from the dead man's shoulder, ammunition from his jacket pockets, and they moved on quickly. He was unimpressed so far. He hated to jinx it but he guessed most serial killers just weren't prepared for this, or for them. Picking up prostitutes at truck stops or throttling women in public bathrooms was something kinda different.

The first shot grazed his arm half an hour later, as they were leaving the stables. Ryan cursed and ducked down behind a conveniently located stack of hay bales, Joe right behind him. 

"She's on the roof," Joe said. Ryan raised a brow and took a quick glance over the hay; she certainly was, sitting cross-legged with a rifle butted up against her shoulder. Lily either had somewhat eclectic tastes or she'd tracked down killers fairly indiscriminately in her weird-ass quest to find the perfect husband or whatever the hell that had really been about. Quite how the girl had gotten involved, and then gotten up there, was a mystery Ryan didn't feel much like solving for the moment. He also hated the fact that it was freaking _Tammy_ , the cheerful girl from his Thursday morning seminar. 

"Hey, Tammy," he called, sneaking another quick peek over the bales and narrowly avoiding being shot in the forehead.

"Hey, Ryan!" she called back, just as weirdly fucking cheerful as ever. He guessed now he knew why, remembered stories about learning to shoot on her grandparents' ranch and her dad being a controlling dick, but he had no intention of exploring that now. "How're you guys doing?"

"Oh, we're just fine and dandy, Tammy," Joe called up, giving Ryan a rather quizzical look. "Is there any chance you could put down your rifle and stop shooting at us?"

A rifle shot hit the top of the bales and that answered that. Ryan checked his own rifle and glanced at Joe. 

"I know, I know," he muttered. "I'm the diversion." He didn't look happy about the plan, but ducked out from behind the bales anyway. He ran for the stable doors to draw her attention and her fire; Ryan raised the rifle and fired, too. It took three shots - it was a fair distance and he was a hell of a lot better with a handgun - but before she could retreat she'd been knocked from her perch and then tumbled haphazardly from the rooftop to the driveway, where she landed in a pile of dreadlocks and hunting rifle with an audible thump. She didn't get up and that wasn't surprising.

Five arrived while Joe was strangling four. Ryan took him by surprise and after a brief struggle the guy's neck snapped loudly. He went limp and Ryan dropped him to the ground at his feet, watching Joe the whole time while Joe watched him. It was hard to look away.

Six was a hunt through the trees as the light failed, a gun in each of Ryan's hands and a bow in killer six's. It was a two-hour-long game of cat and mouse with Ryan driving the guy toward Joe as best he could while trying to avoid a set of well-laid bear traps in the undergrowth. Half of the time Ryan wasn't quite sure who was hunting whom, his heart hammering sickly, the grips of his guns getting sweaty and slipping in his hands. Twice he narrowly avoided an arrow to the chest, retaliating with gunfire that echoed loudly, lighting up the darkening woods for an instant. Then Joe came out of nowhere, smashed the guy over the head with the butt of his rifle, driving him dazed to the ground. He shoved an arrow through his eye while he lay there, and that was that. 

Ryan supposed he had to give him points for creativity, and for giving him a well-earned break. He had no ambitions to take up cross-country running if they got out of this alive; he was better but he still had trouble with his heart sometimes, if he pushed too hard, and it was always in the back of his mind that Joe was the one that had done that to him. Sometimes he dreamed about it. Sometimes, he had to say, the dreams weren't all bad.

Seven and eight were together, and it wasn't pleasant. 

A small guy in an expensive suit and delicate glasses was holding a scalpel over Ryan's bare abdomen when he woke. His shirt had vanished. He didn't remember being knocked out, which he guessed wasn't a great sign in a long day full of multiple head injuries. 

The second guy was bigger, a whole lot taller, standing at the back of the room in a t-shirt that showed off arms like a goddamn pro wrestler's. Ryan guessed this was another of the estate's neverending outbuildings, this one brick-built, and it had probably housed an impressive collection of tools, judging from the cabinets and wall racks, though they were now all empty. Everything he saw there looked like it'd come in from the back of a truck within the last six hours while everything else had been moved out months ago. 

There was an oil stain on the floor and Ryan couldn't see the doors from where he was, tied down to a metal bench, but it had to be another garage. That made three of them so far.

"I get a turn when you're done, right?" the bigger guy asked. He looked impatient, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 

The guy in the suit nodded, irritated. "Yes, you get a turn when I'm done," he said. It was a hell of an odd serial killer team-up, but apparently pretty effective.

The smaller guy pressed down with the scalpel and ran the blade lightly across Ryan's belly, fetching up a thin trail of blood in its wake. He twisted against the restraints but they held tight and in the end all it did was make the scalpel twist a little, digging in deeper at the end of that first incision. He could feel the blood trickle down over his side to drip off his back to the bench. He had no idea where Joe was or what the hell had happened and even though he knew exactly where this little scene was going, not knowing where the fuck Joe had gone to was where his mind got stuck.

They'd been calling this guy, full of originality as usual, the Surgeon. Ryan knew exactly what came next because Mike was on the case and he couldn't keep his mouth shut about work if he tried, where Ryan was concerned. Half the time he felt like an unpaid consultant and the other half an agony aunt, not that he felt like complaining.

He was gagged. He couldn't move. The idea would be to open up his chest, keep him alive as long as possible with drugs and clamped arteries and machines with little flashing lights as he removed organ after organ, then transplanted in parts from dead animals. He wouldn't survive once it had started because no one ever did, though the guy's surgical technique was apparently excellent. Of course, he was performing surgery in a garage and the cow's heart and lungs he'd sewn into his last victim would never have been a great swap.

"Don't worry," the Surgeon told him, as he put down his scalpel and turned away to put on a mask. "You won't feel a thing." Ryan somehow doubted that, given the lack of anaesthetic. 

The big guy across the other side of the room suddenly gurgled. Ryan and the Surgeon both looked over there and there was blood burbling out from between his fingers, his hand clamped down at his throat, his eyes wide. He hit the floor, down to his knees first and then he sprawled face down; of course, Joe was standing there behind him, knife in one hand and gun in the other, though exactly where the knife had come from was anyone's guess. 

"Hello, sweetheart," Joe said, flashing Ryan a dark little smile. "Did you miss me?"

The Surgeon moved for his scalpel but Joe was quicker. The knife went into the side of his neck, neatly severed both carotid and jugular and was back out in a flash; arterial blood had spurted halfway across the room, twice, before the guy could even get his hand to his neck. And that was the end of him, just like that; he fell to the floor and died. Eight months of federal investigation had ended in an instant under Joe Carroll's knife. It was hard not to be impressed.

Joe turned to Ryan, still tied there to the table. He picked up a wad of surgical gauze and wiped the blood from the knife. He tossed the gauze aside and stepped closer. His eyes were dark. His breath was quick. He licked his lips and he put his hand down over Ryan's bloody abdomen, the flat of the blade cool on his skin though the dead guy's blood had warmed it slightly. His fingers were hot. 

For a moment, Ryan actually believed he was going to do it. For a moment, he believed Joe believed he was going to do it. Joe's free hand moved over Ryan's bare chest, lingered at the scars by his heart, tracing them with an odd kind of fondness. Then his palm came to rest over Ryan's throat, the pad of his thumb stroking over the pulse in his neck. The way he looked at him then was enough that half of Ryan had to wonder why he'd ever let him live. For the other half, this was exactly why he had.

Then Joe blinked and smiled wryly, and he unbuckled the restraints. 

"Seven to go," he said, his voice oddly thick. "The next one's yours."

Ryan found his shirt and pulled it on, wincing at the sting as the fabric pressed against the cut on his stomach, the blood making it stick there. His jacket was slung over the back of a chair and he pulled it on, picked up the rifle and stooped on his way out to pick up the big guy's Beretta. He couldn't even speak to Joe. He didn't know what he'd say if he did. He knew exactly what had almost happened.

It was pitch dark outside with barely a hint of moon. Joe had picked up a flashlight from somewhere while they'd been separated and Ryan was cursing his lack of phone since the flashlight function had always been so convenient. No one they'd met there had had a damn phone, which he guessed was smart on Mark's part, and lines to the house had been cut. They tried not to use the light as they made their way away from the house and its attendant outbuildings. Someone had to be looking for them. 

When they came for them, Ryan didn't pause for a second; he shoved his knife up under the first guy's chin and then slashed down hard at his arm for his brachial artery. Joe had clearly shot another when Ryan turned, had broken the flashlight in the process and somehow lost his gun, but apparently the remaining killers had banded together; Joe went down heavily on the gravel while Ryan shot another in the stomach and then went down, too. The butt of a gun connected with the back of his neck and for a second he saw stars. 

Then the last thing he saw as he passed out yet again was Mark Gray's smiling face. He looked ecstatic.

***

He woke abruptly, cold, _freezing_ , his vision swimming. There was a bright light and he could see his breath in the air. There was a huge joint of some kind of meat hanging from a hook nearby and Ryan really didn't want to say what it was with any certainty, given whose freezer this was. 

One of the two now remaining from the little flock of serial killers was standing in the doorway with a gun in each hand, one trained on each of them, looking like he wouldn't miss, and Mark Gray stood just to his side, still smiling. He'd apparently taken to slicking his hair back; he looked just like his brother. Ryan guessed that made sense. 

"Time to say goodbye," Mark said. He tossed a knife toward the two of them and Joe caught it in one hand. "One of you has to die." 

_So you'll know how I feel_ , Ryan filled in. He guessed it was fitting that the one who really got their relationship in any meaningful way was someone like Mark Gray. It felt strange to have that kind of acknowledgement when he was only just getting there himself. 

He looked at Joe. Joe looked at him, then down at the knife in his hand and then back again. So, it had come to this. He guessed it was always going to end this way. It was tough to see how it could've been different.

Ryan smiles, a small smile, a private smile, and he turns his head. He tilts it back; he makes it easy, because really, fuck you Mark Gray, he'd choose his own damn terms. 

Joe's surprised, if the look on his face is anything to go by. He's shocked. He might actually be shaken by it. Ryan knows just what this means to him. He wants to tell him not to hurry but all he can do is pull down his collar and bare his neck.

"Do it," he says. He feels like they've been here before.

Joe lifts the knife. "I'm sorry," he says, and it looks so desperately like he means it that Ryan can almost believe. It's a strange, warm thought to end on.

And then Joe does the unexpected: he pushes the knife down through his blue prison pants, into the space between his thigh and pelvis. Ryan can almost see it the moment he severs his femoral artery, the wince on Joe's face as it happens, the shiver that goes through him with it. He lets go of the knife, leaves it sticking out of him and slumps back against the freezer wall as they all just stare at him. A moment passes as he seems to gather himself, then he pulls the knife out and tosses it down at Mark's feet.

He shivers again and gestures to the bloody mess he's made of himself as he turns his gaze to the men in the doorway. "There," he says. "Satisfied?"

Mark looks appalled. "That's now how it's meant to happen!" he says. "You should've, he should've... No. No!" He shakes his head, keeps on shaking it as he pushes the guy with the guns back out of the room; the guy looks pissed but doesn't react. "No no no." He turns again in the doorway to look at them both. "No. You can't do that. That's not how this works."

He grabs one of the guy's guns and shoots Ryan in the chest, and he closes the door quickly. He leaves them there. Ryan thinks he's going to throw up.

Joe's smiling at him with half-lidded eyes as he bleeds out. "I just didn't think I could live through another failed marriage," he says, and Ryan just shatters. He pushes his hands against the wound in Joe's thigh, barely even noticing that he can't catch his breath, it's getting harder to breathe, his hands are covered in blood in seconds.

"I suppose I should say it just once before the grand finale," Joe says, and all the colour's drained out from his face. 

"Don't," Ryan says. It's like Joe's blood is frosting up in the freezing air and Ryan can't feel his fingers. He can barely feel at all. "You'll only make a fool of yourself."

"It wouldn't be the first time. Just look at the book."

Ryan laughs breathlessly, shaking. His shirt's soaked and it's not only Joe's blood that's soaking it. He's bleeding. Turns out Mark's not a bad shot.

Joe's eyes close. There's no breath on the freezing air. "Don't you die on me Joe," he says, voice barely a murmur as he physically drags him into his arms. Joe's back presses to Ryan's chest, his head lolling back against Ryan's shoulder, Ryan's back against the wall. Joe doesn't move. Ryan struggles to breathe, his face buried in the crook of Joe's neck. Everything's darkening. "Don't you fucking dare die on me." 

And so they die together. Maybe this is how it was always meant to be.

***

He woke four days later. 

He was in and out of consciousness for hours, seeing the scene around him in fragments, putting reality back together piece by piece until he opened his eyes and Max was sitting there next to him. She looked tired, her hair a mess, her clothes crumpled like she'd been sleeping there for days and he guessed maybe she had. 

"Where am I?" he asked, stupid as the question was, considering the situation.

"You're in the hospital," she said. "You died again."

By this point it wasn't even a surprise. Living through it was almost the bigger shock. 

Max filled in the missing parts of the story, since she'd been there for most of it. It turned out she and Mike had worked it from the angle that maybe Joe wasn't actually responsible this time, just like Ryan had said, and so they'd looked for Mark instead. They and a gang of agents had come down on the house in a storm of helicopters and SUVs, they'd searched the place and Mike had finally put down Mark Gray in the process. They'd caught one of the stray killers, the one Joe had shot, trying to make his way out on foot; Mendez had shot him. Ryan was kinda pleased to hear she was back in the saddle. He'd think about the one or two that got away when he felt less like he had to throw up half his body weight and then pass out for a month.

"Joe?" he asked, once she'd finished. She'd had to know he'd ask.

Max rolled her eyes. "Yeah, they found you together." The look he gave her basically said _c'mon, Max, that's not news_. "They found you wrapped the fuck up in each other in a damn walk-in freezer."

"Yeah." He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a second and took a sip of water, glancing at her over the rim of the glass. He almost coughed it back up. He had no explanation for how they'd been found that didn't lead back to a conversation he wasn't ready to have with himself, let alone with her, but she was a damn good detective. It didn't take much to figure it out.

"Well, damn." She shook her head. "So much for the sham marriage."

He laughed at that, but the awkward half smile he tried to hide behind the glass didn't help his cause. 

"Jesus Christ, Ryan. What were you thinking?" She stood, suddenly, angry, pushing the chair back so quickly it nearly toppled over, taking the drip stand with it. " _Joe Carroll_. Claire was bad enough. Carrie, she's a creep and she was a step up from this. Like, five steps up. Ten."

"You didn't make such a great goddamn choice either, Max," he said. "Look at Mike. Does he remind you of anyone?" He set down the glass hard enough that it spilled on the hospital table that was hooked over his bed and the action of it made him hurt. "You basically got engaged to _me_ and how's that working out for you?"

She didn't reply, though it looked like she gave it some serious thought. She sat back down, practically threw herself into the chair and crossed her arms as she clenched and unclenched her jaw. They sat in silence then, pissed at each other but with that usual familiar sense that they'd be alright in the end, because they always were. He guessed he liked having family. It was a shame for her that she was so much like him sometimes.

Eventually, awkwardly, she reached over and squeezed his arm then sat back again like she hadn't. "Yeah, he's alive," she said. "In the ICU. Fucker's probably gonna make it." She didn't add the _but I hope to hell he doesn't_ that he knew was in her head. Not so long ago, she wouldn't have thought twice about saying it. She was stubborn, just like him. He kinda liked that about her.

He had to play the _don't you know who I am?_ card with the agents on duty outside Joe's room, when he'd persuaded Mike to take him down there in a wheelchair ‘cause he was still too woozy to walk. Luckily, they _did_ know who he was and they let him in because of it. Thankfully, Mike abandoned him just inside and then conveniently vanished. Ryan hoped he was taking Max home; it looked like she needed real sleep before she just passed out.

Joe looked dreadful. He was breathing on his own but it looked like half the damn room was filled with tubes and wires and monitors all hooked up to him somehow. The buckled leather restraints at his wrists - presumably in place of handcuffs - seemed like total overkill. Joe was so damn vital that seeing him strapped half-dead to a hospital bed brought on another wave of nausea that he managed to fight down somehow. 

Ryan pushed the wheelchair over to the bed and dropped his head into his hands. He rubbed hard at his eyes. This was such an almighty goddamn mess.

He'd known he shouldn't've got involved. He'd _known_ it. He should've tossed Joe's letters in the trash and left it all the hell alone. He should've moved on, like he'd said he would - Carrie had been pretty willing and that might've been good for them both. But when Joe said they were alike, there was a huge part of Ryan that responded. He felt it, viscerally, urgently. Back at the twins' house with a gun in his hand and a knife in Joe's, he'd believed it. He just had a hard time reconciling himself with that, since he wasn't sure convincing himself would mean anything good. 

Joe, on the other hand, apparently took it all in stride. It was hard to trust him, sure, but he knew better than to take anything Joe said or did on trust; at most, he trusted Joe to be Joe. Every time he went out to the prison to see him, it was a toss-up whether he'd walk out alive and somehow he was okay with that. At some point he'd started to let himself sleep there, conscious of the way Joe threw a possessive arm over his chest in the night, not even a bit creeped out when he woke sometimes to find Joe watching him. He'd have that same unguarded expression that made Ryan's stomach knot and his cock harden. Sometimes he thought he looked right back the same way and that was fine ‘cause apparently Joe saw straight through him anyway. He saw him and he didn't flinch.

Joe watching him while he slept didn't creep him out, but he did make fun of him for it. Joe didn't respond well to teasing, which Ryan guessed was half the fun.

He should've known better, though. He should've stayed away from the courthouse that day and he'd talked himself into and out of it so many times that he was still mixed up about the how and why of it, months later. Joe had been so damn surprised when he hadn't stabbed him and left him for dead in that room over lunch, even more so when he'd dropped down to his knees in front of him. Joe was already hard when Ryan tucked his fingers into the waistband of his pants and pulled down, so taken aback that for once he didn't say a word as Ryan sucked him off right there, his fingers gripping so hard at Joe's hips and thighs that they had to have bruised. Neither of them had cared. Ryan still didn't know whether he'd gone there to kiss him or kill him, and guessed it didn't matter either way. 

It had been a year since their marriage of convenience, almost to the day. He should've divorced him and it pissed him off that Joe had seen what it all meant before he had. Sometimes he was such a smartass. 

Ryan cursed himself under his breath and then he took Joe's heavy hand, twining their fingers and holding on tight. He hated himself for it but that wasn't enough to stop him. Not anymore. He guessed maybe something had changed. He felt himself slipping sometimes.

"You live and I'll make it worth your while," he said, and he meant it.

He knew exactly what he had to do.


End file.
